Sadly, in America, we've gone from that extreme to the other. Now, it's all about not being competitive and not "putting kids on the spot". I was a PE major before I switched to ExSci. We were told to teach kids how to throw, hit, and kick, but we weren't allowed to actually play softball, baseball, or kickball. Nevermind dodgeball *gasp* They felt that these games would single out the weaker, less athletic kids. Maybe they're right, but in real life, I get put on the spot daily.

The state of Physical Education in the US is a sad one. Sorry for the rant.

The funny thing is the stupid fitness test they had put us on the spot way more than losing in sports. I did terrible at most of the sports, but I would take that over the fitness tests any day. The tests they did were not even a very good measure of health and fitness for most people. All it really did was rank the kids in order of how fat they were. I could do that just by looking and save everyone a lot of time.

Oooo... Fitness tests. I hated those, too. I wasn't fat, I was skinny, but weak, uncoordinated, unskilled. I remember a fitness test (I think this was the end-of-the-year one, to determine how much we'd improved over the year) and I decided on the day of the running test that I was going to try really hard. I think the run was 1 or 2 laps. I ran all-out the whole way. We were paired with partners who would watch us cross the finish line as the coach called out the seconds, then report our time to him. When my partner reported my time, the teacher wouldn't believe him. I, in the meantime was on the ground in fetal position trying to breath, so I couldn't argue. Eventually the coach believed the time (I guess it correlated well with the condition I was in). He let me walk and sip water for a while before joining whatever they were doing for the rest of class.

Sadly, in America, we've gone from that extreme to the other. Now, it's all about not being competitive and not "putting kids on the spot". I was a PE major before I switched to ExSci. We were told to teach kids how to throw, hit, and kick, but we weren't allowed to actually play softball, baseball, or kickball. Nevermind dodgeball *gasp* They felt that these games would single out the weaker, less athletic kids. Maybe they're right, but in real life, I get put on the spot daily.

The state of Physical Education in the US is a sad one. Sorry for the rant.

You wouldn't say that if you were a big nerd in HS like me. Unless things have changed drastically in the last ten years, there were plenty of chances to humiliate weak and smaller kids (or fatter) on a daily basis in PE class.

Dodgeball was like the highlight of the week whenever we did it. Mostly PE was just super-boring, like an hour of moderately paced constant jogging. We did a few weight classes, but sadly weren't taught how to do anything correctly, and never took notes to show progress.

I used to crush those fitness tests. 15 dead hang, full length pullups as a child. 20 as an adult. Was always wirey and scrawny, but somehow I had lats or something. Loved standing broad jump too. could outdo taller kids and even sprinters. Even NCAA sprinters in college testing. They would look at me, like what's that little white kid doing? Kinda slow on the 50 yard dash...that was the only bad one. But I could get it done on the 600 yds and the shuttle run is just fun.

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